Question 3 What is my financial budget to help him get the exposure needed?

In many ways my son had the easy job. All he had to do was work hard in the classroom and on the field. My job was to figure out which summer/fall team was the best fit, and which, if any showcases to attend and how many events to attend.  I had to figure out if any of the recruiting services had value.  Aside from being honest with myself as far as my son's talent; the hardest thing was figuring out how I was going to pay all the potential costs associated. Unless your son is a top 500 prospect it is going to cost you some money to get your son the exposure he needs. And if you haven't gone through the process there are plenty of people that will line up and try and take your money.  I want to talk about three main areas of this process; showcases, recruiting services, and summer/fall teams. Keep in mind that as I am sharing my opinion, I am doing so from the perspective of a parent with a son that was a slightly above average high school player that attended a small rural high school.

There are plenty of recruiting services that claim to have contacts with college baseball programs. They have an option to set up a personal profile to upload stats and videos. Some even offer to do an evaluation of your son and they all claim to be able to market your son in a way that will assure him scholarship offers. I've seen some of these services cost as much at $1500-$2000.  From my experience the best site is www.berecruited.com.  I suggest spending the $60.00 for the premium service.  Basically what this site does is allow you to create a profil,e upload video, stats, high school and summer/fall team coaches contact info. You can search their database and get some basic information on all of the colleges at all of the levels. There is a feature to invite coaches from specific colleges to view your profile and it has a tracking feature to see who, when and how often your profile was viewed. There are some other site similar to this, but from my research this one is the best.  I will cover how I used the site along with other methods in future posts.

The next issue we faced was whether to attend a showcase and which one. I can not stress enough to be careful with the showcases. The spring of my son's sophomore year he received a letter stating he could be the next Under Armour All-American and to be considered all we had to do was attend a showcase and if he was selected he would move to a regional showcase. As I recall each showcase had a cost of over $400.  Now as a sophomore my son batted .285 batting in the 8 hole on his JV team. I asked myself how does Under Armour know anything about my son? The simple answer is they didn't. From the research I have done there are so many showcases that are just money makers trying to take advantage of the dream of playing college baseball.

There are, however, some very reputable showcases that will give honest evaluations. PerfectGame is one of the top showcases and from what I heard their evaluations are reliable.  Having said that I chose not to have my son attend any of these events. I considered it between my son's sophomore and junior year which is probably the ideal time to attend.  The reason I chose not to have my son attend the PerfectGame or any showcase was that I was afraid of the rating.  At that time my son was 5'5" tall and weighed 135 lbs. He had below average speed, his arm strength for a catcher was average at best. He was a good contact hitter but had very little power. In my opinion he would have probably not rated very well and I wanted to protect him from the negative feedback. After his Junior year, he was 5'11' and 180 lbs. He had above average arm strength and stated to develop some power. However, by that time we already had some strong interest from a number of D3 and NAIA schools. We dedicated our financial resources to visiting these colleges rather then spending money on showcases that probably wouldn't have given him any better opportunities.  I also want to mention two other showcases that I have seen nothing but positive feedback on. They are the Stanford University camp and the HeadFirst showcases. They are very well attended by smaller colleges that have a strong emphasis on academics.  

The issue is fall/summer teams. Again, you have to do your homework. In Arizona the scout teams seem to be the big attraction and they typically attract the top talent. There are some other teams that get Div.1 type of players. In our case we attended some of those tryouts and were offered spots on some of the lower level teams within the various programs. In some cases we were asked to pay $1250- $1500 to be on a team of 20-30 players to play for 2 or 3 months. In our case that was not in the budget and if it was I didn't see the value in that he was probably going to play only 1/2 the time.  I did have my son attend as many of these tryouts as we could. In most cases they didn't cost anything and you usually get 1-2 days of tryouts with very good players. It was a lost cost opportunity to get in some good practice. 

My son did play fall/summer ball.  In the fall we found a team that had a good coach, the team only had 12-15 players. We didn't play in any of the big tournaments. But we played may of the high profile teams in scrimmages and played in leagues made up of players from their high schools. The cost was $100-$150 per month. My son was able to play significant innings against very good high school talent. In the summer he played on a team made up of kids from his high school and 2 neighboring schools. One year they played American Legion, which is not very strong in Arizona. The next year the team played in a Connie Mack league against some of the  top summer teams. In both cases the team wasn't very good and lost most of the games. However, my son often faced top pitching and, after all, summer/fall is about getting better and he definitely did that.

One last thought on baseball showcases, recruiting services, and fall/summer teams There is a website called www.hsbaseballweb.com. The message board is second to none!  It is a national message board and there are thousands of people that have shared their experiences. I learned so much from that site and it is 100% free.

In my next blog I will discus question 4. Get ready for a discussion on the most important thing, ACADEMICS!!!!